The initial forays into mobile apps by Wendy’s International LLC and Burger King Worldwide Inc., respectively, illustrate the difficulty of adopting business models to a more digital age. Fast food chains are trying to follow in the footsteps of Starbucks Corp., which in 2011 introduced an app allowing customers to pay with their smartphones. Along the way, however, they’ve added complexity to a process that’s supposed to be cooler, not clunkier.

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